I've been watching the events in Gaza since October 2023. After what Normal Finkelstein described as Palestinians breaking free of their concentration camp in an interview (I found this: https://forsea.co/professor-norman-finkelstein-on-genocide-in-gaza-an-interview/) on 7 October, Israel started a horrific bombardment that was chilling. They started bombing everything.
I was watching the news every minute anxiously on Al Jazeera. There were the babies that would die if the hospitals continued to be bombed. Did the babies die? Did the babies die ? Israel bombed hospital after hospital, we got to know their names, Al Shifa, Indonesian Hospitals. They bombed schools. They slaughtered journalists, targeting them and their families. Wael Al-Dahdouh's got to know his family had slaughtered while he was on air. We watched him break down, hold his children's bodies and offer prayers. They bombed mosques, churches, buildings. It went on and on and, now in mid 2025, Israel is starving the population.
I don't know what to describe my feelings as now. Numb. Angry. Numb.
The Americans continue bank rolling this Holocaust, this Genocide. The Europeans are supporting the Genocide. The only resistance is offered by Yemen, Iran, and the Palestinians themselves. I'm not quite sure what the situation is with Hizbollah as Israel pounds south Lebanon every day. Since 2023, as you know Israel and the US have demolished the Syrian state, attacked Lebanon countless times and, have attacked Iran. I don't know what is left of Hamas or Hizbollah.
The Palestinians are now being starved after having been bombed with tens and tens and tens of thousands of kilos of bombs. The most harrowing images and numbers are those of children slaughtered, children starved and children limbless.
These are some stats by Al Jazeera but these are already old: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2024/10/8/one-year-of-israels-war-on-gaza-by-the-numbers.
It's hard to express one's views, feelings when everyone is deathly silent. It's hard to relate to anyone. My Facebook is deafeningly silent. I suppose it's good to know how everyone from the Western professional class of aid /development /humanitarian workers expose themselves. Liberians are of course completely pro US and, can't even comment on events happening in Africa, let alone Palestine. Their political /social commentary is incredibly liberal, market based, colonial. The professional class of Pakistanis that I know are also quiet with a few exceptions. They are also very quiet or ignorant of socio-economic-political issues in their own country. I have a lot of Pakistani friends in the Left and needless to say, they are actively talking about Palestine.
But on the whole, it's a strange consciousness that I have. I don't know if there was a moral global order but whatever this is now, is a perverse barbaric world order. We are living in a time where Genocide and slaughter of children has been completely normalised. This Genocide is in plain view yet it carries on. Those who claim to work for Development, Humanity, etc are complicit in it and want the rest of us to accept there is a good side to this brutal World Order.
That people I personally I know are ignoring the Genocide, are talking more about Ukraine or complaining that USAID is no more. There is something so sickening about this.
I know friendships come first as they were forged organically but how does one relate to friends if they are complicit with their silence.
Ordinary Pakistanis that continue their self indulgent apolitical lives are hard to relate to. They couldn't care less about lower caste Pakistani children who openly beg on the streets or work as domestic workers or in businesses let alone Palestinian children.
It's really hard to relate to anyone. Not because I'm more self righteous than others. Not because I'm more political than others. It's simply hard to relate to anyone when such savagery is being perpetrated with such impunity.
In one of Pankaj Mishra's interviews , Pankaj talked about how lonely it has been. He was referring to the silence on the Genocide. This is one of his interviews on Democracy Now: https://www.democracynow.org/2025/3/4/pankaj_mishra_on_the_world_after. I don't really tune into Democracy Now, anymore. I don't think they manage to connect the dots when it comes to imperialism. They were completely misguided when it came to the destruction of Syria.
If we are meant to look away from the slaughter of children, people being starved, children being amputated, how do we relate to each other if we aren't talking about it, expressing outrage and horror?
I don't know how much of a global world order ever existed, but today's World Order which is saturated with ideas of human rights, democracy, rights of the children, rights of women and minorities, it feels subhuman to be looking away from slaughter. I don't really know how I'm supposed to relate to another human.
I sometimes remind Kavita that the new normal is now a new form of a gratitude: that at least we aren't getting bombed, that at least we aren't being systemically starved. That she has a school to go to, a doctor to visit in a hospital that isn't being bombed.
Gratitude for simply being alive and not getting bombed may be the new minimum.
Meanwhile, it is hard to relate to anyone.
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